Word: textbook
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...Textbook publishers often take the heat for the price of books (Editorial, “Stop Fleecing the Students,” April 14). In the recent debates, however, a major contribution to the final selling price has been overlooked: the campus bookstore. My wife is a sales representative for a large publishing firm that specializes in college textbooks. Much of her daily struggles involves the campus bookstores. Bookstores will routinely raise the cost of books by 20 to 40 percent over the wholesale price from the publisher. The bookstores will then buy used books and sell them at inflated...
Despite widespread claims that new editions come out every other year, the vast majority of textbooks are updated on a three-year cycle. Certainly some exceptions are seen, but that is typically to inspire competition within the textbook market. If professors can have a choice of several books that are all the latest revision, hopefully, students will benefit by having the professor choose the best book among many...
...Textbook publishers should make a better effort to curb the price of books. However, it is the professors who tell the publishers what books they want to use and what kind of “bundled extras” they feel are necessary. If the demand for these items were minimal, the publishers wouldn’t spend the money to produce them. To lower textbook prices, let your professors know you would prefer cheaper books and complain to the bookstores about inflating the costs...
Should the congressional inquiry reveal publishing irregularities such as price fixing—which is not difficult to imagine—Congress must respond with several concrete proposals to ease the burdens on students. First, it should mandate that textbooks with expensive multimedia supplements be made available without these burdensome add-ons, sparing many customers the cost of a service they don’t use. Second, lawmakers should institute mechanisms for ensuring accountability in publishers’ decisions to issue new editions of the same textbook. In the case of these and other rules developed in response...
...students who instigated the study in California and Oregon have begun a fine mission which Congress should now lead to a happy conclusion for students everywhere. Legislators should seize the opportunity to eliminate any undue financial drains associated with the desire to learn. Textbook sales should be governed by student needs first—and profits second...